Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Cc: Greg KH <gregkh@g.o>
Subject: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-core] Re: Poll: Would you sign a Contributer License Agreement?
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2018 07:54:26
Message-Id: 23344.40875.105369.227774@a1i15.kph.uni-mainz.de
1 >>>>> On Mon, 25 Jun 2018, Greg KH wrote:
2
3 > On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 08:50:26AM +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
4 >> [Replying to gentoo-project only.]
5
6 > Why? You put this on -core for a reason, why take conversations
7 > somewhere that not everyone can see them? That's just rude :)
8
9 >> Please read the whole thread. We have dropped the FLA/CLA in the
10 >> latest iteration. Also even in the previous versions it was meant to
11 >> be voluntary, i.e. devs were "welcome and encouraged (but *not*
12 >> required)" to sign it.
13
14 > Where is "the whole thread" at these days? It's hard to keep track of
15 > it all.
16
17 gentoo-project mailing list, thread "[RFC] GLEP 76: Copyright Policy".
18 Latest draft is at: https://www.gentoo.org/glep/glep-0076.html
19
20 >> > And again, as I previously stated, "forking" the DCO is a horrible
21 >> > idea,
22 >>
23 >> Has there ever been a wider review of the Linux DCO? If not, then it
24 >> is not surprising if it fits the needs of kernel development only
25 >> (which is very homogeneous, license wise), but not necessarily other
26 >> projects.
27
28 > Yes, there has been, it is used by lots of differently licensed
29 > projectes these days. One example would be a large number of the CNCF
30 > projects (kuberneties and friends).
31
32 > It has also been vetted and approved by the legal departments of all
33 > companies that allow their developers to contribute to open source
34 > projects. Again, a very wide range of legal and developer vetting has
35 > happened. If you know of any current problems, please let us know.
36
37 The problems are listed in the rationale of GLEP 76.
38
39 With the license currently listed at https://developercertificate.org/
40 ("changing is not allowed") nobody would even be allowed to commit the
41 DCO to a repository under it's own terms. Catch-22.
42
43 We can only commit it under the CC-BY-SA under which it (fortunately)
44 has been released earlier, and then we _are_ permitted to fix any bugs
45 in it.
46
47 >> Are you saying that the DCO is so complicated that all devs will need
48 >> a lawyer, in order to understand what they are certifying? Then we are
49 >> doing something fundamentally wrong.
50
51 > I'm saying that if you change the DCO then it will have to be vetted by
52 > all corporate legal departments. If you do not change it, it is an easy
53 > "we know all about that one, it's fine" 1 minute conversation.
54
55 It hopefully takes less than 1 minute to read and understand the item
56 that we have added:
57
58 (3) The contribution is a license text (or a file of similar nature),
59 and verbatim distribution is allowed; or
60
61 Do you think that anybody would have difficulties understanding this?
62 Then please propose a better wording.
63
64 Ulrich